Campaign 2024

Open Thread

Mark Noonan9 Comments

They got Trump on trial and so he goes and visits a bodega in NYC where the owner was persecuted by the DA for defending himself…large, friendly crowd. To be sure, Harlem is rapidly gentrifying so its not like Trump got popular in the ‘hood…but, still: it is NYC.

Do they get him convicted? Possibly, but I rate it at best 50/50 for them. It only takes on juror to have a mistrial…and the charges are so obviously politically bogus that even a NYC jury might refuse to play along. And it isn’t like the New York government is ragingly popular these days. Acquitting Trump is an excellent way to poke it in the eye. If they get a conviction it is over trivial charges which are likely unconstitutional…so, Trump doesn’t go to jail.

Democrats are crowing that while they have Trump in court he can’t campaign while Biden is free to hit the trail. That’s saying the quiet part out loud! But the fly in their ointment is that Biden can’t actually hit the trail. His latest mental breakdown had him claiming an uncle was eaten by cannibals in World War Two. That was before he warned Israel not to move on Haifa, a city that has been Israeli since 1948. Anyways, the cannibals thing stems from an uncle of his who was in the Army air corps in WWII. The poor man was a passenger and the plane went down in the ocean. One man survived but all others – including the plane – were never located. So, where Biden gets cannibals into this, I don’t know. And the man died before Biden was 2 years old, so its not actually a memory, just something Biden was told about and mangled by his desire that every story about him be the most interesting story there is.

There are some less-bad polls for Biden out there, keeping in mind that to get past 270, he’ll have to get atop Trump by more than 3 percentage points (and anything below 5 is dicey). Other polls show Trump lead steady. Doesn’t really matter. The Mrs paid $4.88 for gas today. If Biden wins in spite of that, we never had a chance. That is, we lost our country ages ago and have just been going through the motions. But those gas prices, those food prices, Biden’s bizarre mental ramblings and increasing physical breakdown, the open border, the crimes committed by illegals, the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine (which is tipping towards disaster, by the way; the MSM isn’t covering it because nothing good for Biden is about to happen there), the sense that nobody is in charge…all of that, and more, is making Trump 2017-2019 shine in retrospect. He’s not nearly as hated as some think.

And if you drill down into the “Biden wins” analysis, it is all based upon a low-turnout election where Democrat GOTV swamps Trump just enough to give Biden 4 more years. Maybe it will be that way. But if its a high turnout election, then it looks like the higher the number of voters, the more Trump is going to get (in some polls of people who didn’t vote in 2020, Trump is up by double digits). Nobody can really know this – there’s no way to know, for certain, who will actually show up. Sure, we can know that a certain number almost certainly will show…but even among the most consistent voters there is some up and down election to election. For those who are occasional voters, its a crap shoot. And as GOP voter registrations continue to improve, we’re getting a class of voters who rarely or never vote. Absolutely no way to know how many of them show – can’t even take a guess at it. The “good” polls for Biden are all D+5 to D+7, predicated upon the GOP just staying home out of disgust for Trump. But if the electorate is R+1, the polls showing it good for Biden are worthless. R+2 or 3? Political earthquake.

More trouble in the House. MAGA blames RINOs, RINOs blame MAGA. There is blame to go around – and MAGA does need to get a larger sense of the possible here, especially with a razor thin majority. But most of the blame must lay at the Speaker’s feet. The Speaker has immense power in the House – Democrats made sure of that over the years. You’ll note that when Nancy was running the show, nothing good for GOPers ever got to the floor. Johnson can do that, too. Democrats can pass whatever they want through the Senate given their majority and our RINOs, but Johnson can pretty much spike anything unless he gets what he wants. And his job was to get us something. We know with a Democrat Senate and White House we’re going to have to put up with huge amounts of Commie garbage. Way of the world, GOP. Do better at the next election. But we did win the House…and that means every bit of Commie garbage should have something MAGA attached to it – if Democrats get money for an NGO to send migrants to the border, then we get money to pay for Texas to build a fifty foot high wall. Like that – and so on and so on. But we got nothing. We always get nothing. And Johnson and the RINOs are smart enough to know that if we don’t get something, there will be trouble. If Johnson falls – and even if we get a Democrat Speaker – then let the lesson be learned: don’t betray the GOP base. Make certain to stroke us. This is the growing pains of a new GOP, guys. Don’t get too upset about it. In the 1850’s the House was a complete mess because the new GOP also hadn’t figured itself out and so essentially handed power to Democrats. It takes time to change.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan41 Comments

The polls are tightening! Biden is surging!

Or, so goes the conventional wisdom. And, hey, there might be some tightening as the primaries end and everyone sorts themselves out on partisan lines. But, there also seems to be in the latest raft of polls some significant oversampling of Democrats. Maybe the earlier polls oversampled Republicans? Could be. But as we’ve said here for years now, don’t put your faith in polls. 2016 was the definitive year on that – wasn’t it something like a 97% chance Hillary would win based on polls? This, I think, is far more decisive:

Except for a very slight uptick in Colorado (which was probably out of reach for us all along), this is a catastrophic collapse for the Democrats. And keep in mind that this shift happened while the GOP was largely run by anti-Trump GOPers who were diligently trying to finish off the whole MAGA movement. This is registration gains in spite of deliberate RNC incompetence. This is people looking at their nation and saying, “we’ve got to do something!”. Not that the GOP is great, but it is the only way to stop the increasingly insane Democrats.

I think that the Biden vs Trump rematch will revolve around the fact that here in 2024 there is no longer any mystery about Biden. Even discounting cheating to get him into the White House, the thing about him was supposedly boring and conventional. That there would be no massive policy changes and we’d coast along in peace and quiet after the alarms of the Trump years. That might have been the plan – in his lucid moments, it was probably what Biden wanted – but given that he is increasingly senile, his aides are running wild, imposing ever more far Left lunacy without a shred of legal power to do so. Biden can’t hide behind a Narrative any longer – he sucks. And the price of food and gas are through the roof. I expect at this moment a 49% to 47% Trump victory. Keep in mind, of course, that anything less than a 3+ point Biden win in the popular vote works out to a Trump electoral victory. Basically, Biden has to get above 50% to win because I can’t see Trump getting less than 47%.

Team Pudding Brain has pretty much abandoned Israel. They tried for a while to triangulate support for Hamas and Israel but the Muslim voters they count on aren’t having it – they demanded abandoning Israel and that’s what they’re going to get. Nothing matters to the Democrats more than winning and if they have to hate Israel to get a win, they’ll do it. Don’t put too much stock into this for us as a Party – most Liberal Jews are Liberals first and last…they are just Jews by descent for the most part; they’ll swallow the insult. Orthodox Jews were already moving towards us. This will accelerate that and it might mean a House seat or two but nothing decisive for 2024.

And it is just disgusting what they are doing. Hamas already has a plan written up for what comes after they kill all the Jews of Israel. Plans for what happens to Jewish property. All neatly typed up and ready to go. There are genocidal maniacs in this conflict; its just that they’re all Muslims. I do worry that Israel is losing the will to finish the job. Anything short of the total destruction of Hamas will be an Israeli defeat, and perhaps an ultimately fatal one. A nation can’t afford to have something like Hamas as a living enemy. I did hear the theory that they are just hunkering down and waiting for November’s result. This could be true. Biden’s people do have a lot of control over deliveries of war materials to Israel and so can exert a lot of pressure…pressure the Israeli’s know will end with Trump’s victory. But that is also a long time from now. Its all very murky at the moment.

Did you notice that the MSM was 24/7 eclipse for a while? I did. Lots of people did. Personally, I think it was to deflect attention away from Trump’s statement on the abortion issue. This is crucial. What he said did upset some pro-Lifers but the pragmatic facts of life are that a majority of Americans currently want abortion legal, at least through the first trimester. We just can’t get around that. Took 50 years of relentless pro-abortion propaganda to get us here and we won’t undo that in a day. It will take decades for us to build a culture of life – and we can’t do that if for purity’s sake we turn all power over to the fanatic pro-abortion Democrats. We have to take what we can get – that was Trump’s essential message. And it is a message Democrats want to bury because their whole Fall campaign is going to be “Trump wants to ban abortion” as a means of scaring upper class urban/suburban white women. Trump does need to get out in front of this – my view is that our failure to do so in 2022 cost us at least 3 Senate and a dozen House seats. Failure to address abortion squarely turned a Red Wave into a Red Trickle. Trump is doing the right thing here; nobody likes a coward so lets be a bit brave and say what we want.

Team Pudding Brain is also cooking up more illegal plans to annul student debt. You can get mad about it, if you like, but it is what it is. They’re playing to win. Those on our side who are all “pay your bills” are simply not getting it. In 2024, some votes have to be purchased. As I said years ago we should have been out in front on this one – and casting it as “Democrats enslaved you to college debt and we freed you from it”. If not cancellation, then at least make it dischargable in bankruptcy. And put the colleges on the hook for at least some of it. Tax college endowments to pay for low income college. So much we could have done and we just blew it. I’m hopeful that Trump comes up with something along these lines. There’s already indicators that youth is prepared to abandon the Democrats…we just need something to tip them.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan44 Comments

We were all wondering when it first came out if it were an April Fool’s joke, but it does appear that Biden is denying he proclaimed trans visibility for Easter. Now, to be sure, one must think carefully about this: the Party Line on it now is that the day has been around since 2009 and it just happened to fall on Easter…and, hey, isn’t this just as important as the observation of the resurrection? So, it might be just on that level that Biden is denying he made it happen – that he was just rote doing what you’re supposed to do on national observations that we all participate in. Because, you know, we all can’t wait for trans day of visibility to roll around each year.

That, of course, is actually damage control: someone decided that Biden and the rest of the Democrats would make a to do about trans on Easter as a malicious insult…and they thought that our outrage would get blowback that would work to Democrat advantage. When it was actually done – when the thing was in the public square – they suddenly realized how absolutely hideous it was and now they’re trying to back and fill.

My advice: forget the polls. They are going to fluctuate a bit back and forth. Carter had a 7 point lead in Gallup in April of 1980. Dukakis was down 2 in April of 1988, up 16 in May. On and on like that. This is what I think is the real dynamic of 2024: that people are just getting sick of it all. The trans on Easter thing is just another element in a large tapestry of things people just don’t like about the Biden years. The biggest thing will remain the price of gas and groceries but in all respects, just nothing is going right. That is why Democrats are now pinning their hopes on abortion: they just managed to get a pro-abortion amendment on the Florida ballot. They’ll do that in as many States as they can. Trust me on this: by September it’ll be 24/7 abortion. It did work partially in 2022. Will it work again? I doubt it. If it does then it means we never had a chance, anyway: if America returns Biden to office just to make sure children can be killed, then we’re out of the political market altogether. But outside a desperation move like that, there’s nothing Biden and the Democrats can do – any policy that would actually fix the problems they’ve created (notably reducing spending to cut inflation and closing the border to stop illegal immigration) is opposed by too large a part of the Democrat base. They are caught in a bind and can only hope that something else gets them out of it. Abortion is something else. So, too, things like trans day of visibility…but that has already backfired.

People are tired. Biden was supposed to be a placeholder. The Not Trump. He wasn’t supposed to do anything but end Covid and then let things coast until someone else got in. But they forgot he is senile – and when not senile, stupid. He isn’t running the show. He lacks the wit or will to ride herd on the far left like Obama and Clinton did. Thus the far left is setting the policy – but nobody ever voted for the far left. The more they do, the worse it gets for Biden.

Louis Conter, the last survivor of the USS Arizona, passed away. He was 102. God bless the man. Almost all the WWII vets are gone. Korean vets, too. The old soldier you see these days is likely a former 19 year old Marine from Vietnam, 1967.

Trump Rolls On

Mark Noonan66 Comments

Nine to nothing; that was a bit surprising in that I thought at least 1 or 2 of the liberals would stick by their party on the ruling. But, honestly, it would have been a tough pill for even the most ardent liberal Justice to swallow: the 14th, if it even applies, is a federal matter subject only to federal law. To disqualify anyone from the ballot would take a federal conviction…and even that wouldn’t necessarily stop a State from placing the convict’s name on the ballot. The Constitution gives the States great control over the manner of choosing Electors. It would be a very bizarre thing if we ever had a situation where someone who had been convicted under the 14th secured 270 electoral votes for President. But the issue only comes up after a conviction in federal court.

Think about that.

A DC jury would convict Trump on command of any charge filed. Zero doubt. You could charge him with being a vampire and DC jury would find him guilty. And yet not only has Trump not been charged with insurrection or any similar sort of act, but neither has anyone else involved in J6. What does that tell you? That the Powers That Be understand that such a charge would be tossed on appeal…perhaps even on the liberal-dominated DC Circuit. The Democrats know they can’t even take the first step on using the 14th against him, even in theory.

So, why all the fuss? Honestly, it was just to fill the empty heads of #Resistance liberals. To make it seem like something is being done. Remember, those types of people believe that Trump really is a Russian agent and that Putin flipped votes in 2016 to get him elected. Not kidding: they believe the whole thing from start to finish. Doesn’t matter that every fact shows the accusations are false: it is what they were told and to this day the MSM has never admitted that they participated in a lie. These people sit around wondering all day long “when will they get Trump?”. This was one in a series of efforts to “get Trump”. It failed; but they’ve already got other arrows in the quiver. These are all falling apart one by one, but it looks like there’s enough to keep it going until after Election Day.

All polls must be taken with a grain of salt, but as I’ve always said, they can be useful in spotting trends. Right now, an outlier or two aside, all polls are indicating a Trump win – with 47 to 49 percent of the vote, with 49 percent working out to an electoral college triumph; maybe as high as 327 Electoral Votes. Get above 50 percent and Trump will head towards 350. That is, of course, now; 8 months out. Lots can change. The trouble for Team Pudding Brain is that things can’t change for the better. Inflation is likely to rise again at least near term. Job losses (especially full time) are mounting. The border remains open. Crime continues to rise. Nothing Team Pudding Brain can do will reverse this because they are ideologically committed to the policies that are causing all the trouble. The only new wrinkle is the increasing hostility to Israel…a gambit to keep Muslim voters on side with a huge downside risk of losing the Jewish vote, which is nearly as large and could easily tip a State or two to Trump. Maybe a miracle happens…but even if things start to get better in spite of Biden, the fact remains that Biden is increasingly mentally and physically feeble. Six months from now he’ll just be worse; all of us who have dealt with aging relatives know how this works…once they start downhill, it just accelerates. Biden is clearly heading downhill.

Will they replace him? Only if he’s dead. His people now have sufficient control over the levers of Democrat power that it is almost impossible to displace them. A full court press by Teams Obama and Clinton might do it, but even that would only make it 50/50. Of course, he might very well die; what sort of chaos ensues if that happens after early voting has commenced is anyone’s guess. But probably there isn’t urgency among Democrats to replace him. To them, its a simple calculation: in the unexpected event that Biden wins, then all is good…if he loses, they figure Trump will have a bad 2026 midterm and with an open seat in 2028 the Democrats would think they’re favored to win it. Democrats are actually confident that they can keep Trump boxed in for 4 years just as they did before.

This doesn’t mean they won’t cheat. Of course they’ll cheat. Massively. They always do. But there is a limit to what cheating can do, and in Georgia and Wisconsin cheating is now a heck of a lot harder than it used to be. Nevada, too, as we have a GOP governor. And cheating only works if you have total control in the exact areas you need it. Trump gets to 49% and they’d just have too large a task on their hands.

I rate the odds as 55/45 in Trump’s favor right now. Subject to modification as conditions change over the next 8 months.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan42 Comments

So, what’s the over/under on Haley getting crushed in South Carolina? I’m going with 40.

She’s still in the race because a lot of big money people keep handing it to her. So, her staff has no reason to quit: they’re still getting paid. And that she hasn’t pulled the plug regardless tells me she’s a creature of her staff. Regardless of what happens in 2024, she’s off my list for 2028. I just don’t trust her.

Team Pudding Brain is now set to call the Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal. Basically asserting the Islamist position on the matter. Why? Gotta be Michigan – his people must be seeing disaster there and are desperate to shore up his support there among the Muslim community. But it probably won’t work: by and large the Muslim community anywhere in the world takes a strongly anti-Israel position.

But even if they kowtow to Islamist demands, I don’t think it is going to do the trick. The murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley by an illegal immigrant is, by itself, just another in a long list of crimes committed by illegals who aren’t supposed to be here…but her death seems to be resonating far more widely than most. People are sick of it. Sick of illegals. Sick of the fact that once an illegal commits a really big horror we invariably find out he was in custody before and could have been deported.

It is all just getting to be too much. It is shifting the political dynamic, including in blue areas. It is such an easily fixable problem and everyone can see that government and business are conspiring to keep the illegals flowing. It makes people feel, correctly, that our Ruling Class hates us. This can lead to very odd things happening. Buckle up.

Some House Democrats are apparently working on ways and means of not certifying the 2024 election if Trump wins. They’ll only do this if they control a majority of House delegations next year – which may be different from who holds the overall House majority. Remember: when the House votes for President, it is one State, one vote. So, whoever has control of 26 or more State delegations wins. Currently the GOP controls 26 State delegations with 2 delegations split (so, essentially, no vote) and 22 under Democrat control. The Democrats would have to have a really good night in November for this to shift significantly. But, there you go: they are going to fight for democracy by denying the result. They are just lying, corrupt hypocrites determined to gain and retain power.

The Fight for Survival Starts Now

Mark Noonan33 Comments

The Iowa caucuses are tonight and I don’t think I’ve ever been less interested in them. Sure, there was that period of time in my 20’s when I was having too much fun to care about anything but the fun, but even then I at least took a peek at the caucuses. But this year I just don’t care. I suspect that Trump will win them handily based on some polling which has rolled across the time line but it occurred to me just yesterday that the people who are pouring over the polls and arguing this, that and the other thing about what may happen are just like a used to be. But now I’m not.

And as I analyzed this realization it hit me: I’m supposed to care about the caucuses in one, small State as our nation falls apart? That if I somehow care about these caucuses and do my political junkie thing it will alter the fact that our government, our corporations, our education institutions and just huge swaths of every other facet of American culture is assuming that there are trans kids? That it is a self-evident truth that some people are born in the “wrong” body and need to be surgically and chemically altered to “correct” the “mistake” that Nature made?

And then the phrase “abortion is healthcare” came to mind and think about it: what they are saying is that pregnancy is a disease and it must be treated by abortion. And at least half – perhaps more – of my fellow citizens hear the phrase and nod along. Do you realize the level of ignorance and evil that has to be reached to accept “abortion is healthcare”? That you have to simply deny the biological facts of life and come to a conclusion that the normal, healthy activity of the human reproductive system is a bane?

And we can go on; there are many millions who wonder if we really should be controlling the border. Whether or not we should have an economy where we produce our own goods. We can slide into the climate cult where we’ll find people seriously saying we have to restrict agricultural production in order to lower the global temperature. Do you realize how stupid, ignorant and evil you have to be to think that reducing food supplies is a good idea? Right now people are working out ways to make sex robots which are so real you can’t tell they’re not human; and there are people – I’ve seen them! – arguing that for a man a sex robot is superior to a human female. My goodness, the levels of evil stupidity we are plumbing!

But wait: there’s more! We’re funding a war of attrition in Ukraine because somehow defending a Donbas packed with Russians from Russia is the most crucial thing in the world. But, meanwhile, Israel fights for her life against people who want to exterminate Jews and we’re tut-tutting about how Israel is fighting her battle. Hooray Ukraine if they can bomb a Russian city – damn those Israelis if they bomb a Palestinian city.

Huge crowds come out almost daily in our major cities to support Hamas, a group dedicated to genocide of the Jews…and in a really bizarre twist these crowds are demanding we stop an Israeli genocide of Arabs which isn’t happening! Do you realize the level of mindless ignorance it takes to get huge crowds out in support of genocidal rapist/murderers and to condemn the civilized? What in heck am I supposed to do with such people? Let them vote? Let them have an equal say along with me in how things are going to be? How can I possibly?

Ok, Mark; take a breath. God is in control. Relax.

So, what I will do come November is vote for the GOP. Not because they are any good but because they aren’t overtly evil, like the Democrats are. But I have no illusions: I’m not voting GOP in any expectation that the GOP will fix things. I’m voting for them as the merest stop-gap; an attempt to slow the roll of destruction as we work out on the local level what we’re going to do to save ourselves. Governor Abbott is actually leading the way here – sending the illegals to Blue States and using his National Guard to secure the border of Texas. Florida has made “woke” largely illegal. We need more and more of this, even if it provokes a permanent split in the nation. That is, we must protect ourselves…and if that drives such a wedge from those Americans determined upon national suicide, so be it.

Because we can’t proceed as if the Left (the Woke, the Progressives, the Democrats, the Communists, the Chamber of Commerce types: whatever you want to call them) is legitimate. They are equal parts insane, stupid and evil. What we must do is prevent them from having a say in our lives…and this means making laws on the local level, ignoring contrary federal court rulings and, if necessary, physically moving ourselves to parts of the country where insane stupidity doesn’t rule. We’re heading that way – and maybe towards national divorce. We’ll see about that: there is a chance the Left gets so crazy that their support dries up even in their strongholds. Not holding my breath on that, of course.

But now it is about survival. Can we preserve out of the wreck something sane and decent? We’re going to find out.

Welcome to 2024: Nightmare or Liberation?

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Not sure. Could go either way. But someone noted on X the other day that the actions of the Ruling Class (DNC/MSM/Corporate America/Deep State/GOPe, etc) are the actions of people who are losing control, know it, and are now lashing out irrationally.

As all of us have agree for a long time, polls are not to be trusted but we have had poll after poll now indicating that the only core, Democrat constituency – that is, core, Ruling Class constituency – who are staying on side are white, college educated women. In all other areas there has been erosion of Democrat support. Not necessarily resulting in gains of GOP power, but certainly ebbing away from the Democrats. And voter registration trends in places like Pennsylvania and Delaware are favoring the GOP. Yes, Delaware. Perhaps there is a limit? Perhaps there’s a point where things are so bad that even the deepest Blue areas start to shift?

We’ll have to see how the year goes but if it ends of a collapse of Democrat support then I’m going to identify the “stunt” of shipping illegals to sanctuary cities as the catalyst. The pebble that started the avalanche. Remember, the MSM simply wasn’t telling anyone about the invasion at the border. If any reports were made about illegal immigration it was couched in “poor, suffering Jose who just wants a better life”…not hundreds of thousands of fit, military-aged males surging across the border unchecked. Certainly nothing about the human costs this disastrous migration has caused. And absolutely not a word about the amount of taxpayer money, funneled through NGOs, paying for the migration. But start sending a few thousand of these illegals to blue cities and the lid was ripped off…mostly because the idiot leaders of the blue cities dumped the illegals in black and other working class/poor neighborhoods as if these people would be pleased (and I guarantee you the upper class liberal whites thought they would; nobody is more racist than a white liberal). It became something nobody could ignore and it placed in sharp relief just how lousy the Biden Administration is. At this point, whether its corruption or incompetence is irrelevant. It is just bad; people hate how things are going and have lost any faith that Team Pudding Brain can fix it.

The really important thing is going to be whether or not our civilization still can be saved. Sure, we might well elect a trifecta MAGA government this November. It could happen. In fact, probably 50/50 right now that we will. But supposing we do, will we then do what is necessary? Like most on the Right I hailed the rise of Georgia Meloni as Prime Minister of Italy in 2022…but we found out by the end of 2023 that she had pretty much entirely sold out. Now we’re all praising Javier Milei…and I strongly suspect he won’t sell out. He’s really taking a hatchet to the system…attacking the very founding ideas of the Progressive Social Democratic State. My thinking with him is that the global Ruling Class will try to have him killed. But if we win, we have to be like Milei…but even more so.

Milei has the good fortune to be in a country where the President has far more unilateral power over government than the USA. He’s able to just shut down things without so much as a by your leave from anyone. But, here’s the thing: we’re going to have to do that anyway. Sure, there’s laws saying that certain classes of bureaucrats can’t be fired without a tedious, time consuming process. Fire them anyway. Even if its initially just telling them to stay home while still getting paid. There was a ridiculous federal judge which ruled a State law banning medical mutilation of minors is unconstitutional: enforce the law anyways.

It is going to take that level of determination. That level of courage. It will take actions that might provoke an extreme reaction. What it will come down to is: do we want to win? I mean really win?

We’re going to find out.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan21 Comments

According to polling nearly a quarter of Americans 18-29 believe that the Holocaust is a myth. Another quarter believe it was exaggerated. I had said some time back that I suspect a lot of people don’t know why the Nazis were bad – they’ve just been told “Nazis bad” and ran with it. But now I’m adjusting that a bit – my bet is that for some time now they’ve been told something along the lines of “Nazis were white, Christian nationalists” and that’s what made them bad. The whole Jew-killing thing has been ignored or downplayed. So, if you suddenly pop up with, “the Nazis killed six million Jews” the kiddies don’t believe it…because if you come at it suddenly and without the lived experience, it does seem way too fantastic to believe. Keep in mind that young Commies simply do not believe that things like Gulag happened, either. As in all generation to generation things, what the current generation believes happened is what the preceding generation told them…and if one generation skips certain details, the next generation just doesn’t have them unless, on their own, they look it up.

You’d think that the Commies who by and large dominate education would want to keep emphasizing the actual reasons Nazis were bad but as soon as you think about it, you know why they wouldn’t. There is, in fact, no real objection to Nazism as it was for a true Leftist. Totalitarian control; destruction of undesirables; rejection of Christian morality…all same/same between Commie and Nazi. And now that Jews have been decreed to be “white settler/colonialists” operating an Apartheid State to keep down “brown” Palestinians (who are no darker than Israels, but details don’t matter), there’s no need to harp upon anti-Semitism as being something bad. The Left needs their bogeyman, of course…but what the bogeyman is bad for is determined by what the Left needs him to be bad for. Right now, the bogeyman has to be white, straight and Christian or at least two of the three at any given time. So, basically, to the Left Nazis are….well, you and me. And anyone Jewish who doesn’t join the Hamas side of things.

We’ve got a real problem, here, guys: we’ve got a rising generation who will vote for Hitler if he promises to annul student debt.

Hunter Biden got indicted – conveniently just in time to make sure no House investigation will be able to call him to testify. Of course, there is a chance the prosecutor – who got burned when Hunter rejected his really sweetheart deal – is now just going to let the process grind out. Hunter, if convicted, is looking at some years in jail even if the judge just slaps him with minimum sentences. It is all pretty much just a drug-fueled orgy – the money almost certainly illegally obtained and what’s tripping Hunter up is that he didn’t declare it on his taxes. And, yes, it is all definitely connected to dear, old Dad. Naturally the Democrats hope that the thing can be kept out of the news (the MSM will cooperate in that) and that it can be dealt with in December of 2024 via pardon – and that is whether or not Joe wins or loses. But the thing about scumbag, drug-addicted degenerates who are protected by indulgent fathers…they tend to be scumbags. I can see Hunter putting massive pressure on Dad to make it all go away long before December of next year…especially as if Dad kicks the bucket, nobody in power is going to give the least damn about Hunter’s problems. This could end up being a major albatross around Pudding Brain’s neck.

Never Trump, Democrats and MSM are all now spending a great deal of time “proving” that the polling is all wrong. We’ve been down this road before, but last time it was GOPers doing it. To be fair, polling is always wrong…but as I’ve also always said, trends are important. What we’re seeing is polls that were favorable to Joe (or at least unfavorable to the GOP) moving strongly the other way. You can always get outliers but they’re easily identified by being out of sync with everyone else…at this moment, even some of the most partisan Democrat polls are showing Trump, RDS or Haley handily beating Biden. And it seems to be fueled by blue collar people moving strongly to the GOP while minority and youth voters are moving a little GOP or expressing total disinterest in voting Biden next year. The only group remaining rock solid for Democrats are college educated white women; as one X friend of mine puts it, to them nothing else matters except their ability to kill their unborn children. What is staring Democrats in the face next year if the polling is even partially right is electoral catastrophe. And all possible GOP contenders are committed to massive reforms and deep investigations of just what the heck has been going on. Meaning: Trump may be revenge on steroids, but any GOPer is going to take a few pounds of flesh. They have to: survival of any future GOP Administration depends on really going after the Administrative State.

I can feel the shift out there. Can you?

They went too far. Too obviously cheated to get Joe in. Too obviously covering up corruption. Too obviously money laundering in Ukraine. Too obviously race-baiting. And too obviously trying to gaslight us about the economy. It all may very well explode in the Democrats face next year.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan82 Comments

Normally, I never condemn anyone for their vote but for 2024 a GOP vote has become a moral obligation on all decent people. Regardless of what anyone thinks of any particular GOP candidate and in spite of the manifest weakness, corruption and folly of the GOP, itself, the Democrats have become so overwhelmingly bad – anti-human, evil in policy – that anyone with the least moral sense has to vote for the one alternative likely to eject the Democrats from power: and that is the GOP.

They are using the Department of Justice as a Gestapo. They are selling us out to the Green Lobby while China builds coal-fired power plants. They favor abortion to birth and the medical transition of children. They are conniving at the new slave trade along our southern border. They are making policy based on bribes and kickbacks. They are feeding the flames of internal hatred and division merely to keep selected demographic voting blocs on their side. It is all just horrible and if it goes on America is lost. They must be stopped – and the only way to stop them (God help us!) is the GOP.

As I’ve said many times, I will back the eventual GOP nominee regardless of who that person is – and I am no longer engaging in internal debate about which candidate is best. They are all better than any Democrat. From the most Trumpy to the most RINO among them, they are all miles above any Democrat. I urge all on our side to cease sniping at each other – sure, battle for your candidate, but don’t spend any time attacking the supporters of someone else. Save that fire for the Democrats. There is simply too much at stake for us to waste our effort on internal battles.

The latest Trump indictment is the same flaming garbage as the other two – they are charging him for speech. The only reason they can do this is the charges are being filed in DC and the federal judiciary there is under the control of frothing-at-the-mouth Leftwing fanatics imposed by Obama. The case should be tossed, but it won’t be – even the DC court of appeals is a no-go as a majority of it is Democrats. Eventually the Supreme Court will toss the case, but that could be years from now. The only question here is do Democrats feel an advantage for a quick trial and conviction (there is no doubt a DC jury will follow Party orders and convict no matter what the facts are), or have it hang over Trump especially if he’s the nominee? They might not know themselves, so you may see a bit of confusion in how they proceed. And they’re not done – they’re working on more charges in various venues and I would suspect if Trump is the nominee then in September of next year he’ll be charged with sedition.

But, does it matter? Right now, Trump is riding high for the GOP nomination and there are worried rumbles among the Left: a concern that even if Biden remains ahead, he’s not enough ahead to win. Remember, 3 or less points in the popular vote likely means a GOP Electoral College victory. And one recent poll actually had them tied – which would work out to a catastrophic Democrat defeat, probably costing them the Senate. I don’t care too much for polls…but the people who control the money in politics (on both sides) live and die by them. That is why we’re also hearing rumbles that people want Joe off the ticket…that, in fact, the recent revelations about Hunter originate in Democrats trying to force a change on the ticket. Who can really know?

The basic problem the Democrats have is that for the first time, they don’t have a smart person in charge. Much as we all despise Obama and the Clintons, they knew how to operate political machinery. Biden is senile and barely able to function more than a few hours a day. The Executive decisions likely depend on who talks to him last, and most of the time that would be Jill, who has never shown any political talent. The really bad thing for Democrats is there is nobody to ride herd on the most kook Left parts of the coalition. They are now rather regularly saying the quiet part out loud…including in front of people who aren’t emotionally committed to them. It could make for a wild ride next year.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan64 Comments

The White House won’t emphatically state that the coke isn’t Hunter’s. It is a fairly simple thing – it either is, or it isn’t his. And as I’ve said before, don’t buy any story claiming they have no idea…they know exactly who the coke belongs to. That they won’t forthrightly state it isn’t Hunter’s means they know it is his. And, yes, coke-heads are like that – very irresponsible to the point of sheer idiocy. He really did leave his laptop filled with incriminating evidence at the repair shop. Because he’s a stupid drug addict. You don’t have to overthink this. More than likely, he brought a little blow into the White House (it seems that 53 year old Hunter has taken up residence there as being there is bullet-proof as far as getting a summons goes)…he probably took it out to give himself a little boost and simply forgot about it. End of story.

But the thing is that simple possession is 3 years in jail – in other words, if it is Hunter’s coke (and it is) then he has to go to jail. So, the White House will continue to spin this thing with the most absurd lies and rely on it that DOJ has been told to keep hands off on it.

I just want it noted at this point that bringing decency back to the White House has involved a lot more hookers, blow and abandoned grandchildren than I thought it would.

And about that grandchild – I guess the case has now been settled but the fact of the matter is that Joe Biden refuses to acknowledge the child. Some rumors exist that Hunter pressured the mother to get an abortion; it is in keeping with the sort of low-life Hunter is and I could easily see him and his garbage father being pissed off that she didn’t agree to that expedient. Not that I’m calling her a pillar of virtue – it could well have been a set up by a clever girl looking for a payday. That does happen – normally with sports stars and the like, but any moron with access to cash is a target of such things. But regardless what sort of people mom and dad are, the child isn’t responsible…and that child is Joe’s flesh and blood. Family. And he’s rejected her. That right there shows what a lousy creep Joe Biden is.

But we already knew that – when his first wife was killed Joe showed up at the hospital with cameras in tow…so that they could get dramatic, heart-wrenching shots of Joe’s reaction. Think about it: at a time when his wife was dead and his child injured, Joe spared thought for how to wring some political advantage out of it. Joe Biden has been trash as far as we can determine all his adult life – some time after he rose to adulthood, and it seems early, he decided that being a lying, backstabbing grifter was the way to go.

More and more people are thinking that Trump has the nomination in the bag. I’m not one of them. Mostly because I’ve given up making any sort of hard and fast political predictions. Been burned too many times when what is obvious turned out to be wrong. Things are just strange out there and anyone telling you that they know what will happen is trying to make a sucker out of you.

But speaking of the upcoming election – that is another wrinkle in the coke story; at least for a time, the White House was trying to imply that Team Harris might be responsible for the coke. They dropped that – my bet because someone Team Harris knows for certain who’s coke it is and threatened to spill it – but it brought to mind that Gavin Newsom has been acting a lot like a guy who wants to run for President…and not in 2028. As California continues to crash and burn, Newsom has been out on the hustings helping State Democrat parties and politicians. You know: laying the groundwork. To be sure, it could just be groundwork for 2028 but if he was laying the foundation just for that, he’d be front and center stumping for Joe and Kamala. He isn’t. What’s going on?

Once again, nobody knows – even the people doing it might not know. Might just be keeping irons in the fire. But there is that chance that Team Democrat is planning on scratching both Joe and Kamala…and that means they’d need a new guy and Newsom is the major Democrat doing the preliminary work to be that guy.

I guess we’re sending cluster bombs to Ukraine – lot of people upset about that because of the type of ordnance. I’m meh on it: the only reason cluster bombs are rated as bad is because when we used them in the past, the American Left worked up the accusation that use of such munitions counted as a war crime. That was ridiculous then and it remain ridiculous today. They are just bombs…and they are excellent for anti-personnel and for making runways at least temporarily unusable. As I’ve said before: there really aren’t war crimes. There are crimes, of course – the Holocaust being the worst. But war crimes? You’re engaged in mass slaughter and you’re going to try to parse this type of slaughter as good while that type is bad? Attempts to humanize war are attempts to humanize hell; the thing just can’t be done. Additionally, no enemy of the USA will ever adhere to any rules – if they think it will give them an advantage against us, they’ll do it. The reason we, as a people, should not engage in brutality (rapine, slaughter and the like) is for our own sake…and because clemency towards enemies is the mightiest engine of war. But just get stuffed about “war crimes” when we’re blowing the enemy up…the purpose of the war action is to kill the enemy. How he’s killed is irrelevant.

Speaking of Ukraine – we’re sending the bombs because they’re said to be out of ammo. The Ukrainians have been on the offensive for some while now and they’ve only advanced a few miles and are now out of ammunition. This doesn’t look like raging success to me.